Birsa Munda's Village Gets A Facelift For A Meal With Amit Shah, Gets Ditched At The Last Moment

"What was the point of all this expense?"

BJP President Amit Shah, along with Chief Minister Raghubar Das and former Chief Minister Arjun Munda, visits the residence of tribal Anil Oraon at Harmu locality.

When Amit Shah announced that he will be visiting Ulihatu, tribal icon Birsa Munda's birthplace about 65km from the Jharkhand capital, the state and the district government decided to do some quick fix. After all, Amit Shah is not ordinary man, he is the President of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and everyone knows that he is very, very close to the Prime Minister.

On Modi's birthday, Shah was supposed to share a meal with Kanu Munda, the great grandson of Birsa Munda who had led a revolution against the British.

To welcome Shah, the village authorities got together to quickly do a quick-fix of the households. Kanu Munda's dilapidated ancestral home where he lives with sister Champa Munda got a facelift too. The state funded to make a pucca room, a tiled floor and a boundary wall. All this, because Amit Shah was to dine there.

Champa , in fact, cooked for the BJP leader since the break of the dawn. But turns out, Shah chose not to dine at Munda's house. In fact, Shah just went till the courtyard and didn't even enter the house.

"What was the point of all this expense? The government could have instead given us the cash," Champa, the great grand- daughter of Birsa told Bengali daily Anandabazar.

Champa said the village doesn't even get sufficient water, so this show of building toilets to impress Shah was completely useless.

Accompanied by chief minister Raghubar Das, on Sunday, Shah landed at 11am at a temporary helipad built about a kilometre away from the residence of Birsa Munda's grandson, Sukhram, and performed rituals to start the construction of the houses in the village.

Each of these houses will have two rooms, a kitchen and balcony, besides a washroom, at cost of Rs 2.63 lakh. However, a villager raised a pertinent question. "What is the use of those 8-9 feet long houses? Even a bed can't be put inside," he said.

Champa wanted to raise the problems of her village with Shah when he would dine with her family. But that dream remained unfulfilled.

The villagers also fear that with Shah gone, no work will be done in the village anymore.